The life of Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Fantastic: the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger
By Laurence Leamer
Sidgwick & Jackson, $33

We humans are nothing more than complicated machines. That
was the conclusion reached by the 18th-century French physician and
philosopher Julien Offray de la Mettrie. There could be few more
compelling embodiments of this concept than Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

A mama's boy bullied by his police chief father, Schwarzenegger
remade himself into what writer Charles Gaines, a fervent admirer
and sometime Boswell, was moved to describe as "very possibly the
most perfectly developed man in the history of the world". From
this position of corporeal supremacy flowed phenomenal fame, wealth
and power.

To its detractors, bodybuilding might seem narcissistic, even
grotesque. Clive James' oft-quoted likening of the physique of the
former Mr World, Olympia and Universe to a condom stuffed with
walnuts is perhaps too organic a metaphor for a man who, through
the prodigious application of exercise and chemicals, has become
the sum of his individually sculpted and strengthened moving
parts.

Schwarzenegger's signature film role is the robot known as
Terminator T-800, which, Laurence Leamer tells us, is the only
"character" he has ever wanted to reprise. In order to play a
machine in the process of discovering what it is to be human,
Schwarzenegger first undertook a journey in the opposite direction.
Many millions of moviegoers, needless to say, have appreciated the
end result of this odyssey.

Unsurprisingly, the man who invested so much of himself in the
construction of his body viewed other bodies in similarly
sub-aesthetic terms. According to Leamer, Schwarzenegger's attitude
to women prior to his marriage to Maria Shriver was determined by
their shape: "Arnold proudly called himself a 'butt man' and could
lovingly talk about that part of a woman's anatomy the way a wine
lover discusses vintages."

Viewers of Big Brother, whose male participants have a
preoccupation with working out and comparing the physical features
of the women in the house, would be familiar with the type. Perhaps
host Gretel Killeen would excuse Arnold, as she did recent evictee
Glenn, by saying that he is only articulating what men typically
think anyway.

Meanwhile, as Governor of California, Schwarzenegger is
responsible for the wellbeing of the world's sixth-largest economy.
He moved to his current job after a career as Hollywood's biggest
star, making what film writer Gilbert Adair has called "quite the
stupidest cinema in the world". Though he had an actor-politician
predecessor in Ronald Reagan, Schwarzenegger represents a very
different kind of Hollywood, one in which a leading man's pectoral
definition is more highly prized than his cheery smile.

Oscar Wilde observed: "It is only the superficial qualities that
last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out." Could there be hidden
depths to the politician who labels his adversaries "girlie men" -
an interesting epithet given Schwarzenegger's own obsession with
his physical appearance? Leamer's previous biographical subjects
include the Kennedy men, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson and
Ingrid Bergman, so he has worked extensively on both the showbiz
and political sides of the American celebrity street.

Fantastic's title is also Schwarzenegger's favourite
word, with the reader largely left to tease out the irony of its
double meaning. Leamer is not an authorised biographer, but he has
broad sympathy for his subject, as in this appraisal of the
seemingly smooth transition Schwarzenegger made from movie roles to
politics: "He incorporated them into his own political and cultural
image of modern society.

"He, too, believed that individual man fashioned his individual
fate, and that destiny is a creation of each of us in a free
society."

The majority of voters seem to prefer their leaders to be
warriors rather than philosophers. There is such a thing as an
overcomplicated politician, which may account in part for the
electoral ascendency of the likes of George W. Bush, John Howard
and Tony Blair and the abject failure of their opponents.

Schwarzenegger seems to have offered a spectacularly
straightforward saviour at a time of intractable budgetary problems
and legislative gridlock. Whether the action hero can turn his
personal myth into the order yearned for by his supporters is an
open question, though recent reports suggest that the reality of
the situation has begun to erode Schwarzenegger's popularity.

At one point Leamer describes his subject as "like his classic
Excalibur convertible, a complex piece of machinery that had to be
perfectly tuned, or it did not run properly". Machines do
eventually break down or wear out, and what Leamer is able to
reveal about Schwarzenegger's fear of ageing indicates that he is
as conscious of mortality as the rest of us, perhaps even more
so.

In the meantime, the myth of invincibility that Schwarzenegger
has carefully built up throughout his career could be strong enough
to carry him all the way to the White House, or so this book seems
to suggest.